Tuesday, May 28, 2013

ThingLink Launches a Free iPad App

ThingLink is one of my favorite tools that I've reviewed on Free Technology for Teachers. The free service allows you to make any image interactive by adding digital pinmarks to it. Those pinmarks can include text, links, videos that are revealed when some touches those pinmarks while viewing your shared images. The service previously worked in your iPad's web browser, but now this great service is now available as a free iPad app too.

The new ThingLink iPad app allows you to import pictures from your iPad's camera roll and or take new pictures to turn into interactive images. You can start using the app without creating a ThingLink account. To get started just import a picture from your iPad or take a new picture with your iPad. After selecting a picture tap it to add interactive pinmarks. Each pinmark that you add through the app can include text and or video links. When you've finished adding pinmarks you can publish your image publicly or keep it private in your ThingLink account. ThingLink accounts can be created using an email address or a Facebook account.

Applications for Education
A few of the ways that I’ve seen ThingLink used by teachers is to have students add multimedia labels to diagrams of cells, to label geographic features, and to label historical images like that of the signing of the declaration of independence.